Longform Writing

Historically, I’ve put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to constantly improve Sifter. Add a constant flow of customer requests on top of that, and there’s never been a shortage of feelings that Sifter’s not good enough. Until recently, my…

Imagine for a moment that you’re self-employed, married with a child and a mortgage, you’re the only full-time employee of your company, and the sole breadwinner for your family. Now, imagine having a minor surgery with an expected four day break from…

When I started writing Starting + Sustaining, payment processing was the most daunting topic. I felt that I had a cursory understanding of it all, but that turned out to be wrong. It is without a doubt the chapter that required the most effort to both…

If you’re building a company as a solo founder, you have a long lonely road ahead of you. The sooner you start putting together a team, the better off you’ll be in every possible way. I originally made the mistake of believing that it didn’t make sense…

Three months after deciding to write a book about building, launching, and maintaining a web application, the progress is good. I’d like to be further along, but took a break from writing to spend some time on Sifter. So where are things at and what…

It seems like many stories about quitting a job are dramatic and quick. i.e. “I had finally had enough and just quit.” It doesn’t need to be that way, and it’s probably easier if it’s not. Instead of thinking about giving your employer two weeks notice,…

At some point, we’ve all faced it. Do we rebuild from scratch or simply refactor? With personal sites, it seems the rebuild is the default option. We see an archaic mess of code and a design that’s atrocious. So we rebuild. With a web application,…

Prior to Sifter, I was a specialist. I needed to keep up with two or three high-level topics in order to stay current and not be left behind. I had a few RSS subscriptions and kept up with a few topics on Twitter. It wasn’t easy, but wasn’t impossible…

In order to fully commit your attention to building something that isn’t yet making money, you can either work more hours, or get by on less income. The former isn’t healthy or sustainable, and the latter isn’t easy. When you have the golden handcuffs…

One of the most frustrating tradeoffs during these years that I’ve been working on Sifter has been the degree to which I’ve cut some corners with user experience. It wasn’t a decision that I took lightly, but it was a very deliberate decision. Now that…

There was a probably an easier way. Fortunately, it feels like we’re over the hump. Regardless, being a solo founder probably isn’t for everyone. I imagine it’s something like being a single parent. It’s not impossible, but it’s no cake walk. There’s…

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in our garage making things by hand for my office. Admittedly, much of the stuff is purchased, and all I’m really doing is a little sawing, sanding, painting, finishing, and nailing. Assuming it’s not just the…

I’m in love with this article about meetups to repair broken goods. Working on Sifter and pouring myself into it has bred a fascination with tools, manual labor, and vintage goods. Things used to be built for longevity. Design was simpler and more…

We’re rolling out a new identity for Sifter, and while I couldn’t be happier with it, part of me worries about how superficial it may seem from the outside. Reading countless corporate-speak press releases over the years about new logos “synergizing and…

I’m self-employed. One might think that means that I’m my own boss, but it doesn’t really work like that. I don’t have a boss. I have dozens; only I call them customers. Now, these great folks aren’t technically my boss, but they influence our…

Since day one, I’ve always felt like I was behind. I was moving too slow. I could never catch up. Our customers wanted, even needed, improvements. I rushed and hurried and worried. I bounced around from this enhancement to that. I got away from…

Last night around 2:30, I woke up to the piercing sound of house alarm going off. I sprinted to Lauren and Bella, who were sleeping in the other room in an attempt to help Bella sleep better. Once I was sure they were alright and hadn’t triggered the…

In basketball, and probably many other sports, you always want to finish strong. That is, you don’t want to waste all of your energy getting to the hoop and then not make your layup. Often, it’s so easy to caught up in the first part, it’s easy to lose…

The full stack for a web application can be rather overwhelming, but it’s not quite as bad as you might think. If you look at this list knowing only a small portion of the items, it can be incredibly intimidating. Really, though, it’s an incremental…

It used to be a job, a responsibility, and a livelihood. The moment we launched, shit got serious. I stopped dreaming and started responding. To customer feedback. Feature requests. Complaints. Cancellations. It stopped being a dream come true and…